Story’s importance to worldview

My apologies for infrequent posting (both recently and for the next four weeks).  My semester has started up which will likely interfere with my blogging.  I also expected my schoolwork to inconveniently not provide fodder for my blog (how much arts stuff can there be in Addictive Behaviors and Christian Ethics after all?) but that has fortunately proven to not be the case right out the gate.

For Ethics, we’re reading portions of Elements of a Christian Worldview (compiled and edited by Michael D. Palmer who’s my professor for this class), which describes six elements of a worldview — ideology, narrative, norms (moral and aesthetic), ritual, experience, and the social element.  Concerning narrative, I was struck by the following:

“[W]orldview narratives provide patterns, or models, for the adherents of the worldview.  The language of ideology by its very nature tends to be abstract, technical, and somewhat sparse.  In well-developed worldviews, ideology’s role is crucial, but the average person finds little delight or encouragement in navigating its intricacies and nuanced distinctions.  Narratives, by contrast, engage and capture the imagination.  They inspire not only the mind but also arouse the emotions. They invite the hearers to envision and vicariously feel what it would be like to live out the ideological content of the worldview… Narratives may make us laugh or cry; they may amuse or shock our sensibilities.  In any case, they provide models — for character development, for how and how not to behave, for what are and are not acceptable social arrangements.”

Incidentally, the five forms of narrative it lists are sacred writings, myths (stories involving deity but not necessarily considered factually true), historical narratives, literature and drama, and visual art.  I have to write a short paper describing the elements of worldview, so it’s safe to bet that “Give me the songs of a nation, and it matters not who writes its laws” is going to make it in there somehow.

And while we’re on the subject of Story, you’ll want to check out Ben Arment and his upcoming STORY conference.  Cool stuff!  I probably won’t be able to make it out there (day job and all that), but the regenerate Mrs. is hoping to go.  She, incidentally, teaches a not-so-small group called The Story each May where she takes people through the entire Bible chronologically in three 2-hour meetings.  Crazy but cool.  I’ll have to blog more on that in the future.